


sad stories of the death of princes

by lulla_lunekjaer



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Epistolary, Spoilers, the play's been out for like 400 years it's not that shocking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-30 21:23:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13960314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulla_lunekjaer/pseuds/lulla_lunekjaer
Summary: post-to be or not to be, Ophelia writes a letter to her (dead) motherandpost-play, Horatio thinks about his task





	1. my mother, who art in heaven -

**Author's Note:**

> this is hella short but I wrote it for class and said I'd put it up so here

Mother, I feel most peculiar in nature, and I fear that I may soon go mad with it - for I have seen such stuff today as lunatics are made of, and yet, I know not what I have seen. If I know it not, perhaps it is not, or perhaps it means I cannot possibly be mad. Mother, if you have any sway in heaven, help my poor soul. It is a sorry state in Denmark. 

My father and the king enticed me to Hamlet, knowing they were watching, and the things I saw, the things I heard - oh! those are too soon to speak of. And yet, I feel some strange compulsion, as if drawn to 't. I stood watching behind the door, like as a child when father spoke to Laertes of matters I was not to know of. This time, it was Prince Hamlet on the other side, and as I watched, and he knew not that he was watchéd, he spoke of terrible things, of flesh and whips and love and sickness. Of sin, and of me. Mother, I cannot bring myself to what happened next. Shame is too soft for my raw wounds. 

I fear for him, Mother. I have loved and hate him and yet it is fear that carves itself through my breast. He spoke not to me, I fear and I plead, but to some specter in the shape of me. Some lily-white Ophelia, drowning in his words and mine own sorrows. Understanding was not within my grasp. Mother, if there is any heaven where you are, there must be, for there is none in Denmark, and I shall never be happy there. 

Your Ophelia

 

[the above was left on the tomb of Isabelle, wife of Polonius, sealed with wax]


	2. my prince, who art in -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaand here's the other thing I did but felt was too short to put up by itself

The world has fallen on my shoulders. 

My prince is dead and I survive to tell his story. 

I who was the least of his comrades - mere Horatio. Who am I to live when so many others have fallen to this madness? And what madness is it - that unnaturalness which had possessed my lord in so unseemly a fashion upon his sight of the ghost? that which fell upon Laertes at Ophelia's grave? that which possessed the king, Claudius, to kill his brother and take the queen and throne? the queen herself to drink the wine? our dear old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to come betwixt my prince and the king, to distract, to tarry, to bring those players, to betray my lord Hamlet to the Dane and to the English. 

Or was it mine own madness, that even though I swore, I kept silent and nothing said until it was too late? Could I have, with a word to either, have prevented this brutal carnage, this death of Denmark? Or do I even now break my oath, though I was charged thusly by my prince, to keep and to breach. 

I have begun to tell the story to the king, Fortinbras of Norway, now of Denmark, who though he came with army, has been wont to sit as if at my knee hearing sad stories of the death of kings. It is a most unnatural thing, to sit and tell the events as I knew and as I think he knew, as might have been, what I have pieced together from their testimony at the last. I feel I should weep in the telling, but I cannot, for my lord with his last breaths charged me thus - to break the silence which he has left, to break mine and his own oath to do so, and to break my heart by each telling of the tale. I will tell his story, though it gives me pain to do so, I will tell it again, and again, and again - and in each telling, my prince will be with me once more. 

The rest will not be silence, but everlasting life. 


End file.
